


Road Trip

by malinaldarose (coralysendria)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 02:55:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coralysendria/pseuds/malinaldarose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mels goes for a drive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Road Trip

It was a particularly fine car, Mels thought. She accelerated away from Leadworth at a rate of speed highly inadvisable for the narrow twisty road. Her head twinged slightly in the bright sunlight, so she slipped on the shades clipped to the visor. She wished she had a car like it, but kids her age ( _For certain values of my age,_ she thought wryly) weren't supposed to have cars at all, let alone beauties like this. Well, she would enjoy it for now, and make sure to have it tucked up safe and sound back in the doctor's parking spot by the time Amy and Rory got out of school; it wasn't like she could get far from Leadworth, after all, without one of them along. 

As always when she thought of her best friends, Mels felt a pang, though she dismissed it as only her steadily worsening headache. They didn't know -- would never know -- but Amy and Rory were what kept her in the sleepy village when all she wanted was to run, and keep running, until she found a place where she could live free. Except...such a place did not exist. Not for Mels. Not when Madame K lurked in the back of her mind with a self-satisfied smirk, her eye drive enhancing her air of menace.

The car surged forward as Mels' foot slammed down on the accelerator. The pain behind her eyes sharpened. Madame K had ensured that Mels wouldn't run -- couldn't run -- by programming a proximity command into her subconscious. She could not get more than twenty miles from either Amy or Rory without pain which intensified with each passing mile, until she gave up or passed out. She had tried to push through it only once, and woken to find herself in hospital with Rory staring down at her, a worried line between his eyes.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice gentle and steady as always. He'd decided that he wanted to be a nurse, which was why he, not Amy, was at her bedside. Amy didn't do well with sick people.

_("A_ nurse? _" Amy had said, "not a_ doctor? _"_

_"I've had enough of being a doctor," Rory, still dressed in his Raggedy Doctor shirt, had muttered.)_

Mels blinked, thinking back. "I...don't remember." 

Rory's lips thinned, but all he said was, "Please be more careful, Mels."

"Sure thing, Dad," she'd said. Amy hated that sarcastic tone, but Rory only shook his head, told her he was glad she was okay, and left her frowning, trying to remember what _had_ happened.

Mels was rarely able to sort out the muddled jumble of her memories, but sometimes . . . _sometimes_ , she would remember: A loving voice telling her to be brave. The swirl of a red cloak. Floppy hair and a bow tie. A flash of bright blue and a song in her mind. Those were her earliest memories. Later, there was the spacesuit, the small room in the abandoned orphanage, the addled caretaker. She remembered being ill. Dying. And then had come the regeneration -- not her first -- and when she recovered from that, Amy and Rory had been there. Older. So much older than they were now. Her parents had taken her home with them, and, for the first time ever, she had been happy.

But it hadn't lasted. Madame K had come for her again, using unspeakable means to force a regeneration. When she recovered, she was in Leadworth, a child again, the same apparent age as her parents. Now something dark and deadly slept in her mind. Something to do with Amy's ridiculous childhood obsession with her imaginary friend and his blue box. Something just waiting for the right trigger to wake and wreak havoc. Sometimes, Mels could almost catch the shape of it, could almost _see_ what it was. Those days were the same days that her muddled memories began to make sense, when she saw that she wasn't just troubled, troublesome Mels Zucker, when she could almost put a different name to herself. Those were the days when she felt trapped by everything, _especially_ her best friends. And those were the days when she stole a car and drove it out of Leadworth as fast as she possibly could, straining the engine and her excellent reflexes to their limits, pushing at the constraints in her mind.

Mels' head now hurt so badly she could barely see. She eased her foot off the accelerator; there was a spot ahead where she could turn around. She pulled over, and leaned her throbbing head against the steering wheel. It hurt, oh, it hurt. It hurt to remember being raised by loving parents, it hurt to remember what Madame K and her associates had done. It hurt that she was not strong enough to break their conditioning. It all hurt. With a sob of defeat, Mels swung the car around. As she did, a door slammed shut in her mind.

It was a particularly fine car, Mels thought, a few miles later. Pity she had to get it back before Amy and Rory got out of school. Maybe if she timed it just right, she'd avoid a tongue-lashing from Amy and a disappointed look from Rory. Honestly, sometimes you'd think they were her parents or something.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written to fill the Slave Fic square on my Trope Bingo card. It's probably not what most people think of when they think of slave fic, but really, what else could you possibly call Mels?


End file.
